A Literary Reading of Lieutenant Kennedy's Case: Kennedy as Picaro

Rob Van Craenenburg, University of Ghent

[These materials on the case of Lt. Kennedy have been adapted, with the permission
of the author, from his course
website. The author may be contacted at Rob.VanCraenenburg@rug.ac.be.
GPL]

ieutenant Kennedy is no picaro in the regular sense of the term. Though his story is
narrated in the proper form; first person singular, through his letters,
his is no tale of spectacular suffering and cunning which wins him victory
at last. Yet in a specific sense he possesses all the characteristics that
make a popular hero.

Any popular hero is a mixture of obedience and
subversion (See John Fiske
COLOR="#000000">). A totally subversive character cannot become popular
since critique at the level of the system demands a level of abstraction
that denies the axiom that every product of popular culture should be relevant
to the reader. By relevant I mean that portion of the text to which the
reader by belonging to a specific socially constructed group relates to.
Relevancy is a key element in understanding why a specific cultural product
becomes at a moment in time "popular." Critique at the level of the system
for example would be the total aversion to capitalism by the detective,
the total rejection of democracy by the spy and the utter disregard of
the cowboy for man-made law. Yet any cowboy, detective or spy who totally
rejects the basic elements that are responsible for the anomalies he confronts,
is destined not to become popular.

Lieutenant Kennedy does not reject the military
nor the system that he serves. In his letter to the editor of the Daily
Mail he tries very hard not to alienate the English readers whose "honest
English hearts must have burned with indignation in perusing these grave
charges against a military officer bearing Her Majesty's Commission".
His conduct is precisely that mixture of obedience (convention) and subversion
that Michel De Certeau calls "poaching." He
is a one-man micro-politic guerilla. His obedience we can detect from his
ongoing belief in the system of military justice, since he expressly asks
for a military tribunal to look into his case and perceives his name being
removed from the roll of the Bombay Army as "an anomaly" as this
is been done on the orders of the Secretary of State, a civilian.

Moreover, he cannot see anything wrong with his
(alleged) behaviour as "an Officer and a Gentleman". A man not
thoroughly convinced of the correctness of his behaviour and the truth
regarding his alleged criticism of the British rule in India would not
so wholeheartedly ask to be judged under the severe scrutiny of his military
peers. Also, would his letter to the editor of the Daily Mail have been
so harsh and self defending had he known that the allegations might be
backed up with other reports than those just based on hearsay? Is this
the letter of a man who has actually slandered Her Majesty's Government
and knows it?